March of the Penguins and one Flamingo
by Fancypants66
Summary: The penguins leave the ship to patrol the lands around them and find one friend in the process.
1. Exploration

March of the Penguins…and one Flamingo

By Fancypants66

When the ship had stopped in Antarctica, the penguins thought they had reached the land of milk and honey. It seemed that they were mistaken.

Skipper looked calmly at the frozen land before him. There was nothing but ice for miles around. With this, the four penguins began walking forth towards the wastes.

The bulk of the four didn't notice the other crates, nor did they care. Skipper simply said "They can get out and enjoy it with us if they want!" "Kowalski said "It's a shame. But survival of the fittest, that's what it is!" Rico simply said "Others. Ice. Too bad." It was Private who felt the most guilt.

"Skipper" he said, "Shouldn't we let the others out?"

"Nope. Leave them there. They don't matter." Skipper replied. He clearly changed his mind.

But one animal did manage to escape the crates. His name was Mark. He was a flamingo.

-Note: When I originally thought up this story, I thought that Mark would be voiced by David Spade. Moving on.

Mark was out of his crate and flapping free, so to speak. When he got out, he realized one thing. He was hungry and cold. So he walked on out into the barren snows in search of food and perhaps a source of warmth. He found instead, four sets of bird footprints. He thought, maybe the locals can help me out; these must be their prints. And so he followed them on…

This is as far as I'll go for now.


	2. Mark is saved

Mark traveled on and on for hours through an endless blizzard hoping to find a possible shelter but instead was met with snow, snow, and limitless snow. It was then when he seemed to find no reason to go further. He collapsed.

Not far off, the penguin troop was staying in a shelter made of snow.

It seemed that they would be trapped in this strange new land. When Skipper sent everyone off to search for anything of interest, Private had found Mark, unconscious in the snow. At the time, they didn't really know each other very well, but Private really didn't care. He knew that bringing back a civilian who was wounded was the right thing to do, so he used every bit of his strength to haul Mark's body back to the shelter. At that moment, Private and Mark were about twenty feet from the base.

"Skipper!" he yelled. "I've got a civilian! He's wounded"

"A civilian, you say? Bring him here!" shouted Skipper, whose voice rang clearly through the blizzard.

With the four penguins heading back to the ship, Skipper decided that they had been very cruel. All the other animals had been locked in those crates with no protection from the cold, so Skipper and the others decided to open the crates, and let everyone out. They'd have to stay inside the ship at all times, but at least they'd be safe.

Mark was placed in the medical wing of the ship where Rico and Kowalski would nurse him back to health. He was given some piping hot fish soup from the galley and was given cards from the other animals.


	3. Guests of Honor

With the penguins going further inland, they were going farther into the snowstorm. Mark wasn't completely healed, but he offered to go anyway. Skipper insisted that he had strength enough for it. But the penguins left the ship in the hopes of convincing some of their own species to go as well, preferably the females of their kind.

Mark, on the other hand, was making friends fast. One of his closest friends, Jem, was a frog who was very much concerned about his stint with the extreme temperature. With Private being his first friend, Mark was bored in the ship with nothing to do until  
Jem came along and offered to pass the time with a game of checkers every day. Mark was slowly regaining health and making friends, some of which were a rhino named Artie, a monitor lizard named Bax, an elephant named Darnell, and Ted the polar bear.

-Note: I thought that Artie would be voiced by Danny Trejo, Bax would be voiced by Steve Carell, Darnell would be voiced by Omid Djalili and since I'm sure that many of you who have seen the short film with the penguins going to New York; I won't bother explaining who Ted is. Anyways…

With this group of animals seen with Mark as though they were his fans, they were dubbed Marky Mark and the Fan Bunch (I, at first meant for these animals to be called The Fun Bunch, but shortly after, it occurred to me that they be referred to as Marky Mark and the Fan Bunch), and they were strong believers of the "All for one-one for all" policy.

With that, they set up a grand dinner for all other animals on board, with the penguins as the guests of honor but it became apparent after but a few hours that they were no-shows…


	4. Prison!

Mark whined "Why aren't they _coming_! I slave over a cold crate making sushi for at least a hundred times, and the birds that I make it for aren't here!"

Artie, who was a depressed and sullen fellow, simply replied "Maybe they don't care" he said in a sepulchral tone.

"Or it could be that they picked up some takeout on their usual rounds and thought to surprise us!" said Darnell.

The possibilities were endless…

Meanwhile, in a lab not far from the shipwreck, there was a lab where animals from Antarctica were collected. Among the animals kept there, were some crabeater seals, a few skuas, an old leopard seal and…the penguins.

Skipper, who unlike the others was wide awake, could only read in Russian, which was most fortunate, because the cages in which they were kept in were adjacent to some signs written in Russian.

The signs roughly translated thus:

_Ship to New York:_

_Central Park Zoo, _

_United States_

Skipper was utterly appalled at what the signs said. _We worked so hard to escape and we're stuck again with people who want to send us back! Impossible! _With that, Skipper said nothing. He just stared at the cages where his mates were kept with the deepest somber state.

And all the while, all the others had seemed to give up hope as well, for without their leader to rouse them into an escape. Rico could not pull out his usual stick of dynamite, Kowalski didn't much feel like reading the signs for a way out, and Private simply stayed in his cage, in the corner most obscured from light, and sobbed quietly in sorrow…

And now that I've built up a fair bit of misery, I shall remedy the situation with a lighter chapter tomorrow…Western time.


	5. The Fan Bunch sets off!

With the penguins gone, the company was worried about what to do. It was understandable that the penguins had their odd little dealings here and there, and that the penguins were known to be, well, to put it softly, thought Ted. But being gone for _four hours! NO!_

Ted decided that he would go and look for the penguins, come heck or high water for debts needed to be repaid, the penguins got the group of them out of the crates and they needed to repay them. And so Ted decided to do something.

"We have to go out and find them!" he said to Mark. "They could be gone out in the cold, hurt by so many things!"

"Hmm. You're right. They could be skewered, pickled, burned" began Artie in his sad tone.

"We gotta save them, Mark! Darnell, you're with me, right?"

"-roasted, smashed, squashed, poisoned-" Artie went on.

"Yes" replied Darnell. "If it means saving them, yes, I will help. They would do the same for us."

"Mark said "All right. I'm in. I can go, but I need to go alone. You guys stay here."

As could be imagined, the others broke out into protests.

Ted shouted "We have to follow the number one rule of penguins!"

Mark replied "Never bathe in hot oil and Bisquick?"

Ted said "No. Never swim alone"

Artie merely replied "I don't swim. I'd drown"

Bax replied, but gave no sign that he heard the others "Only if you guys will go, I can dig it. If I can dig it, you can dig it, we can dig it-dig it-dig it-dig it-dig it-dig-it dig-it baby! Can you dig it!" he said insanely. "But I need a sweater. I'm a reptile, if I go out there, I may freeze!"

"Sweater granted" said Mark. "Let's go!" And with that, Mark pulled out from the supply closets a blanket which, courtesy of Ted's claws and Darnell's nimble trunk-work, was turned into a lizard sweater with hood, tail warmer, and booties to match.

"I'm a-comin' wit ya!" croaked Jem.

"No, Jem, you can't. You'd freeze!" said Mark.

And with that, the group rushed off in hot pursuit for the footprints' end, with Bax as a scent hound.

"When I find them, I swear I'll never call Rico weird or Skipper insane again!" said Mark.

"I never did, but I won't either!" replied Darnell.

"FOLLOW THE SARDINE SMELL ROAD!" screeched Bax, doing what he did best, quoting songs.

(theme from the A-Team)

But little did they know that they were followed….by a small, hopping somebody.


End file.
